"It seems that on Mother's Day, moms say, 'Let's all go to church.' But on Father's Day, dads say, 'I'm going to go play golf,' " says Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research, the Nashville-based Christian research firm that conducted the survey.

According to pastors:

Mother’s Day gifts top Father’s Day

God may not play favorites between moms and dads, but their kids do when it comes
to buying gifts.

Nearly 50% of Americans celebrate Mother's Day with gifts for moms but only
about a third do the same for dads.

People will spend more on mom (average $90) than dad (average $80) this year.

The top three gift choice categories in 2012 are different as well. For moms,
"giftable" such as flowers and candles are first, then consumables
such as chocolates, wine or coffees. Gift cards come in third. For dads, clothing
is the top category, followed by gift cards. Third are consumables, particularly
wine, beer or liquor, "although dads like chocolate, too."

Danziger's findings are based on Unity's bi-annual surveys of 2,000 Americans
with a median household income of $90,000.

--Cathy Lynn Grossman

•93% say Easter ranks first, second or third in church worship attendance with 55% saying it's No. 1.

•84% name Christmas in the leading three, and it's tops in 29% of churches.

•59% list Mother's Day in the top tier, although only 4% say its the highest attendance day.

Not one put Father's Day first or second. Just 3% name it third.

How much "holy" folks invest in either holiday is shaped by tradition and, quite simply, the calendar.

Pastor Ross Sawyers of 121 Community Church in Grapevine, Texas, notes that dads are honored the third Sunday in June, in summer vacation season.

"If both holidays were the second Monday in May, my hunch is attendance would be nearly the same," Sawyers says.

Family dynamics make a difference, too. Dads may be church-averse, but moms have clout on certain days.

"Christmas, Easter and Mother's Day have become the three days of male holy obligation when their wives and mothers are able to guilt them into the pews," says David Murrow, author of Why Men Hate Going to Church.

This peaks like a candy kiss on Mother's Day when "pastors tend to gush over women in their sermons," Murrow says.

"But on Father's day, men get a 'straighten up' lecture: 'Dad, get right with God, reconcile with your kids,' etc. You would never hear any suggestion on Mother's Day that women could improve on their relationships," Murrow says.

Pastor Mark Estep of Spring Baptist Church in Spring, Texas, says he reversed course when, "it dawned on me that we brag on moms and chew the men out."

Yet, despite the Spring Baptist's calls to "man up" to following Christ, Estep says, Father's Day attendance lags by 200 to 300 people for the church that usually draws more than 1,700 in Sunday worship.

There is one category of churches where Mother's Day is No. 1, according to the LifeWay survey: Tiny churches with average Sunday attendance under 40 people, such as Nashville's First Wesleyan Church.

Pastor David Gould, 42, says it's an inner-city congregation, "where the mothers and grandmothers are the fixture of the community. Our numbers jump up with folks who will come with their moms to honor them this Sunday, even if they go to a different, bigger church other Sundays.

"Most people say their spiritual life and foundation comes from their mother," Gould says.

Pastor Geoffrey Mitchell, 36, is counting on those motivations. He's picked this Mother's Day for the debut worship service for a new Disciples of Christ congregation, Big Life Community Church in Oswego, Ill.

His reasons are both pragmatic and spiritual.

It's the ideal day for attracting the husbands and the 20-something kids of moms in their 50s, the two demographics with the lowest church attendance, Mitchell says.

And mothers offer powerful examples of a life of faith, the pastor says.

Mitchell's sermon theme will begin with his own mother, Margie Mitchell, 62, a stroke survivor who still leads Bible study and youth group activities. He calls her an ideal illustration for how "we should never let our circumstances interfere with finding faith here and now."

That echoes the original honoree of the first official Mother's Day: Anna Reeves Jarvis, who devoted herself to improving the health of women and families in the 1850s.

She established Mothers' Day Work Clubs where she taught women sanitation and provided medications for the poor. Neither did Jarvis let the Civil War interfere with her passion for good works, although her home in Grafton, W.Va., was taken over by Union forces for Gen. George McClellan's headquarters.

Jarvis persuaded her clubs to serve both Union and Confederate soldiers and, in 1865, she organized a non-partisan Mothers' Friendship Day.

After Jarvis died in Philadelphia in 1905, her daughter and namesake began an energetic drive to honor all mothers like her own.

The young Anna Jarvis enlisted politicians and businessmen to the cause, leading to the first official Mother's Day in 1908. It was marked on May 10, at the Andrews Methodist Church in Grafton, where her mother once taught Sunday school, and at Wanamaker's Department Store in downtown Philadelphia.

The politics worked. President Woodrow Wilson issued the first official proclamation of Mother's Day in 1914. But the business link soon went sour for Jarvis.

Her vision of children devoting a day for prayer and personal time with mom was quickly transformed in a multimillion-dollar commercial behemoth. Gratitude gone gift-zilla.

"It was never her intention. She never embraced the greeting card and floral industries," says Kim Mitchell, a member of the International Mother's Day Shrine's board of trustees.

Jarvis didn't bow meekly. She spent every last day and dollar battling to reclaim the purity of the original celebration and died a penniless spinster in a sanitarium.

In 1972, Andrews Church officially became the International Mother's Day Shrine, incorporated to "preserve, promote and develop through education, the Spirit of Motherhood."

But even at the shrine — a classic red-brick country church with wooden pews, stained glass and a big pipe organ — there's a gift shop selling mugs and collectible plates.

Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Wash., the mother of Father' Day, fared better on making peace with commercialism.

Dodd spent Mother's Day in church in 1909 and was annoyed that mothers were honored while devoted fathers such as her own were ignored.

She soon persuaded Spokane ministers to give men equal honors, and the pastors came through with sermons citywide. By 1924, Father's Day was recognized by President Calvin Coolidge.

And Dodd seemed to have no issues with it being celebrated, with events such as a 1943 luncheon tied in with a war bonds fund drive, according to the Spokane Regional Convention & Visitor's Bureau.

Still, many folks take both big days with equal amounts of prayer and personal attention.

Kelly Criss, 42, who grew up in Grafton but now lives in Sachse, Texas, outside Dallas, celebrated Mother's Day a week early when she could come east to see her mom.

Back in Sachse for Mother's Day — and Father's Day, too — Criss says she and her husband and their 8-year-old son will all go to church as they do every Sunday.

Then, she says, "we'll all head for the hockey rink. We all play."

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